


sonnet 43

by cosmicallycatastrophic



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Sonnet 43, i dont know i just have feelings ok, oh boy do i love commas, old romantic sonnet kinda love apparently, theyre in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 21:26:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9845669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicallycatastrophic/pseuds/cosmicallycatastrophic
Summary: how do i love thee?ronan and adam count the ways.





	

**Author's Note:**

> based on + including how do i love thee? (sonnet 43) by elizabeth barrett browning.

_How do I love thee? Let me count the ways._

_I love thee to the depth and breadth and height_

_my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight_

_for the ends of being and ideal grace._

When Ronan thinks of death, it feels like the barest tickle, the lightest breath somewhere he can’t quite scratch. He’s come close, he almost had his finger on it, _unmade unmade unmade_ , but he still doesn’t know how to visualise it; his life drawing to a close, a final full stop. He wonders if he should believe in heaven, it would make sense for him to believe in heaven, but it’s hard to make himself believe in holy places and eternal bliss when he’s seen so _many_ damning examples of the opposite. It’s hard to picture the ends of being when his flatmate was a ghost and his best friend is twice-deceased, and they are still two of the most real people he’s known in his life. _(Life, what does that mean?)_

He thinks he catches a glance of heaven, whatever it could be (choirs of angels and harps and clouds and feeling _still_ , at last, feeling at rest and content) when he kisses Adam Parrish; every time feeling new and wild and so right, the truest thing he’s ever done. He feels his heart clamouring, he feels something open up inside him and he feels- he feels so deep, he feels his soul grow until it swallows him whole. He doesn’t believe in heaven. He doesn’t need to. He has never been good at words- they’re dangerous, they’re big and sharp and heavy- but he looks at Adam and he thinks _I’ve never felt like this before_. He thinks _I love you_.

 

_I love thee to the level of every day’s_

_most quiet need, by sun and candle-light._

Adam still works; he has to, he has to, _it’s for college_ , _it’s not killing me_. He spends his hours carefully, he fixes cars, he goes through this because he has to, because he needs it to be normal. He needs his friends to be normal and alive, he needs his apartment to be normal and cramped and cracked. His whole life he has been fighting for normal because he needs it, and he will _not_ give up that hard work, he won’t.

But he’s noticed that he needs something else, too, and it’s quiet and shy and it underlies everything he does, it sits in the back of his consciousness with his shopping list and how to replace an accessory belt. Adam knows how to push his needs away, to look them in the eye and then pointedly turn his back, but he realises something slowly, over weeks, over hushed mornings at Monmouth and glowing nights at the Barns (he feels fireworks go off in his chest and thinks _this is right_ when he kisses Ronan, soft and smiling because he can’t believe the universe gave him this, even when far more impossible things have happened). This need doesn’t feel bad, and he doesn’t want to deny it. It is a comfort, he hasn’t had one in years and he can look at this particular need and embrace it, after a lifetime of stomping on the need to sleep more than four hours a night, the need to buy groceries, the need to let himself relax.

He finishes at Boyd’s on Saturday night and he wipes his hands on a rag and he phones Ronan.

“I just finished work. I need to see you,” and Ronan says _sit tight, tiger_ and it’s as easy as that, needing something that doesn’t hurt, _need_ and _love_ blurring into one.

 

_I love thee freely, as men strive for right._

Everyone walking the halls of Aglionby knows Ronan Lynch, knows that he fought. They part around him and Gansey and Adam, they look at him and they say nothing. They know he fought but they don’t know what for and they don’t know why, why he had the burning anger inside him that threatened to send him up in flames without warning. Ronan fought for a lot of things. He likes to think he fought for what was right, but he knows otherwise. He knew fighting Kavinsky was right but that wasn’t really why he did it. For the longest time, everything in Ronan’s life was a fight, being alive was a battle, and maybe he just wanted to break shit so it would look like he felt. He didn’t concern himself with what was _right_ , not always, because it was a loose term (nothing could be right when there was so much wrong raging inside him). He let other people worry about right and wrong, they could burn themselves out trying to do good, he didn’t care.

And now there are undeniable miraculous things in his life that are right. Adam is sitting in his kitchen eating cornflakes and drinking coffee out of a present from Matthew, a mug with Latin verbs stamped on the side (Ronan thinks _amo_ ), and it feels right, like stepping outside and feeling sun cradling his face for the first time in spring. He would fight for this; sometimes they both have to fight for this, it wouldn’t make sense if they never had to fight. He knows what it feels like to have such a fierce love for something that he would fight for it until his dying breath- something right.

 

_I love thee purely, as they turn from praise._

For most of his life, praise has been the most important thing to Adam; he had to do well so he could get out of Henrietta so he could make it, by himself, somewhere far away and beautiful. It made sense to want praise, to know he was on track for something better. It mattered most from his teachers, he thinks, but it was strangely important (or not strangely, really, when he looks at it) from Gansey. He wanted, so selfishly, the assurance and validation from someone like that, not a friend, but someone pure-bred, old money. He couldn’t imagine giving it up, because it was a lead to the life he wanted so desperately- it tethered him, a buoy that he would hang onto if it killed him. It might have been close to killing him. He was overworked, he felt like a dead man walking ninety percent of the time, but it anchored him.

Other things anchor him now, in ways that he doesn’t quite realise. Ronan’s palm against his, like it was made for the sole purpose of him holding it. Ronan wandering around the farm (scowling at the hour but turning tender as soon as he reaches the cows) in a fleece and rubber boots, bathed in dawn light. Ronan pressing ice cold hands on his stomach just to hear Adam groan in a façade of annoyance; Ronan rubbing the knots out of his back after being hunched at Boyd’s for hours; Ronan pulling back from their kisses with his mouth and eyes so open, so honest, setting a fire in his stomach. Adam thinks he doesn’t need _praise_ (it sounds silly now, _well done, good job!_ ) when Ronan looks at him like that.

 

_I love thee with the passion put to use_

_in my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith._

Church is complicated for Ronan; religion is complicated for Ronan. When he thinks of church he thinks of Niall Lynch’s sharp smile on a Sunday (and the devil in his garage), Declan’s pressed shirts, Matthew’s combed-down curls and his neatly done tie. It means a lot to him and he can’t explain it, feels stupidly inadequate when he tries. Church is close to the only thing left from his childhood, as miserable as it sounds. He had so much pain, so much grief giving his insides acid burn; church was somewhere he went as a comfort- he would breathe in the incense and bow his head and kneel when he was meant to, and it was simple like nothing else in his life was, just instructions and obeying them. The grief had ripped a part out of Ronan and he felt the emptiness keenly, until Adam.

And the voice of the Father rings in his head- _a man cannot be a god, a man cannot be divine_ \- and Ronan disagrees so silently, because the Father hasn’t seen what he’s seen- he hasn’t seen Adam Parrish gasping above him, strobed in moonlight, he hasn’t seen the way Adam’s eyes crease up when he laughs. Ronan thinks these things are very close to _divine_ \- why can’t a man be divine, when religion is woven into every part of his life? Why can’t his worship be like this?

 

_I love thee with a love I seemed to lose_

_with my lost saints._

Glendower wasn’t really meant for Adam (or Noah or Ronan or Blue), he was for Gansey, and Gansey alone, from when he was ten years old and given a second life by a dead king and a murdered teenager. It was Gansey’s quest, Gansey’s rise and fall, the longing and the heartache. But it still hurt for Adam. He wanted Glendower, of course he did, he wanted that wish for the million things he would never get any other way. It _stung_ , waking up from a dream where he could have money, a house, _sleep_ (he could barely remember sleep, a ghost of a feeling- it was so unbelievably cruel to have that taken away). So maybe Glendower wasn’t Adam’s cross to bear, but he felt the loss like his own.

What is a saint? Is it a saviour? Adam has a saviour. He strokes Ronan’s knuckles where they lie over his heart. His words are hushed in the stillness of Ronan’s bedroom.

“I could stay here forever.” He breathes out, and he knows Ronan understands the weight of that. Ronan looks up at him, his dark skin catching the sun and making Adam’s heart clench.

“I’d let you. I-“ he looks down, tracing his finger over the softness of Adam’s stomach. “I love you.”

It’s a mumble, rushed, but it’s enough, so much more than enough; Adam reaches out for Ronan’s head, puts his arms all around him, says _I love you too, so much_. They stay like that, quiet, in love. In love.

 

_I love thee with the breath,_

_smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,_

_I shall but love thee better after death._

**Author's Note:**

> uh so this is what the depression churned out. it's not very polished up and i just realised i am a huge fan of using commas all the damn time. come chat with me on tumblr @ greedismyservant !


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